Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Cookbooks are great reading... even better if you actually make something from them. My favorite is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. We joke that it's "the Bible" because it's so enormous. But there are simple, no-nonsense recipes with loads of notes and variations. It's bristling with sticky notes from all the recipes I want to make, or notes like "Angela doesn't like this" and a date.

(Noting here that today my awesome Scouts recieved their Bronze Award! More about that in a later post, but it made for a lot less time to paint.)

Monday, May 11, 2015

Today's greenery is either clover or wood sorrel from my yard - it's hard for me to tell when they aren't flowering. Wood sorrel has deep yellow flowers, and is very tasty. I like to go picking dandelions and wood sorrel in my yard and add it to my salads - foraging is awesome as long as you're careful what you pick.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

This dress was inspired by the gorgeous dogwood outside my window. There is also an amazing tree on the way to church where a family's planted a white and a pink dogwood together, and intertwined them so it looks like just one tree with pink and white blossoms. We look forward to its blooming every year - especially because it's for such a very short time.

Wednesday, May 06, 2015

I am especially proud that today's painting came on a day I got my exercise/walking/rosary in, regular workday, led a Girl Scout meeting, painted, and then went to a leader's meeting for our troop's Bronze Award ceremony next week. I am not saying anything to brag, but to be amazed that I can find time to paint as long as I make it a priority. What I'm basically learning is, I need to make this a priority again.

Monday, May 04, 2015

One of the dandelions I picked for inspiration the other day went into full-blown awesome mode today, opening up into a firework bloom of seeds and inspiring me. I also wanted to paint someone with white hair, as I've now had almost a year of not dyeing my own. It's not nearly as awesome as this.

Sunday, May 03, 2015

The colors are a little over-saturated, but I guess that's what you get for taking a picture with your phone at night. The real colors are inspired by one of the few tulips we have left after the neighborhood groundhog decapitated them all. And her hat is - what else? An acorn.